(The title)
comes from a cat called Christopher Gibbs. Mick laid it on me but it was
Christopher who arrived at that mixture. Although we had all been throwing
around Tramps' Mushup or something. On the same idea. We wanted
to do the picture. That idea came first, the beggars thing came first...
Mick was very much into that tattered minstrel bit then.

-
Keith Richards, 1971

COVER

I don't find (the cover we proposed) at all offensive.
Decca has put out a sleeve showing an atom bomb exploding. I find that
more upsetting.

-
Mick Jagger, 1968

Anita, Mick and I found this wall. Barry Feinstein
photographed it. It was a great picture. A real funky cover. The fight
(Decca Records) gave us we dug in our heels. They really wouldn't budge.
It stopped the album from coming out (sooner). Eventually it got to be
too much of a drag. It went on for 9 months or so. It was like them saying,
We
don't give a shit if your album never goes out. After that, we knew
it was impossible and started looking around to do it differently.

-
Keith Richards, 1971

We really have tried to keep the album within
the bounds of good taste. I mean we haven't shown the whole lavatory. That
would have been rude. We've only shown the top half! Two people at the
record company have told us that the sleeve is terribly offensive.
Apart from them we have been unable to find anyone else who it offends.
I asked one person to pick out something that offended him and he quite
seriously picked out Bob Dylan. Apparently Bob Dylan's Dream
on the wall offends him... We've gone as far as we can in terms of concessions
over the release of this sleeve. I even suggested that they put it in a
brown paper bag with Unfit For Children and the title of the album
on the outside. But no, they wouldn't have it. They stuck to their guns...
It was simply an idea that had not been done before and we chose to put
the writing on a lavatory wall because that's where you see most writings
on walls. There's really nothing obsecene there except in people's own
minds... We'll get this album distributed somehow even if I have to go
down the end of Greek Street and Carlisle Street at two o'clock on Saturday
morning and sell them myself.

-
Mick Jagger, September 1968

I've lost interest in (the album cover battle)
situation. It's been a complete waste of energy. We agreed to them using
a different sleeve in the end and it still hasn't been realised yet. They
change their minds all the time about it - come and go.

-
Mick Jagger, November 1968

(The fight) was so silly - everything written
on the wall was relevant to the album. Do they really believe people don't
read things on public lavatory walls?

-
Mick Jagger, 1969

We copped out, but we did it for money, so
it was all right.

-
Keith Richards

CREATION

There is a change between the material on Satanic Majesties and
Beggars
Banquet. I'd grown sick to death of the whole Maharishi guru shit and
the beads and bells. Who knows where these things come from, but I guess
it was a reaction to what we'd done in our time off and also that severe
dose of reality. A spell in prison at Wormwood Scrubs would certanily give
you room for thought! I was fucking pissed with being busted. So it was,
Right
we'll go and strip this thing down. There's a lot of anger in the music
from that period.

-
Keith Richards, 2003

During that long recording lay-off after Between
The Buttons, I got rather bored with what I was playing on guitar...
Anyway I eventually got into open-D tuning, which I used on Beggars
Banquet. Street Fighting Man is all that, and Jumpin' Jack
Flash.
Child of the Moon was one of the early open-tuning numbers
on the electric guitars, because Street Fighting Man was all acoustic
guitars.

-
Keith Richards, 1977

I (was) working a lot with open-E and open-D
tuning for Beggars Banquet, working from what I'd learned during
that year off the year before. (But I wasn't using the open-G yet), not
at that time, except I played around with it for slide...

-
Keith Richards, 1989

Jagger came to me after Satanic Majesties
and said, We're going to get a new producer, so I said, OK, fine.
He said, We're going to get an American. I thought, Oh my God,
that's all I need. I don't think my ego can stand having some bloody Yankee
coming in here and start telling me what sort of sound to get with the
Rolling Stones. So I said, I know somebody! I know there's one in
England already and he's fantastic, and he'd just done the Traffic
album: Jimmy Miller. And it was a remarkably good record he made, the first
record he made with Traffic. I said, He's a really nice guy. I'd
met him, he'd been in the next studio room and I said, I'm sure he'd
be fantastic. Anything but some strange lunatic, drug addict from Los
Angeles. So... Jagger actually took the bait and off he went, met Jimmy
Miller and gave him the job. And the first thing Jimmy Miller did (laughs)
was fire ME. Cause he'd been using Eddie Kramer as an engineer. And so,
naturally, quite obviously, he wanted to use his own engineer, the guy
he knew.

-
Glyn Johns, 1982

I came in at a crucial time. The night Jagger
phoned I just knew he was going to ask me to produce them. I just glided
over to his house on a cloud. Before I was there 10 minutes he asked me
if I'd be interested. Besides being excited, I'd always been a Stones fan...
They'd play me songs on cassette or acoustic guitar, and we'd talk about
how we'd develop it. That's how we came to record on cassette. I'd contribute
in an unobtrusive, uninsulting, unnegative way. Everything was always great;
how could WE make it better.

-
Jimmy Miller, 1979

(Mick) told me that he'd liked what I'd done
with Traffic. We met and discussed ideas and later we began the sessions.
Mick has found it too much of a strain producing Their Satanic Majesties
Request and playing as well. So he contacted me.

-
Jimmy Miller, 1969

(Even though he wasn't really contributing
anymore), there was no immediate necessity to go through the drama of replacing
Brian because no gigs were lined up. We first had to recognize the fact
that we needed to make a really good album. After Satanic Majesties
we
wanted to make a STONES album.

-
Keith Richards, 1979

I'm delighted (to produce the Stones). Being
down here with the Stones while they are rehearsing, you get to know and
feel their music. You become one of them, which not only makes for a feeling
of brotherhood and love, but also keeps you in sympathy with the ideas.
It saves a lot of time and misunderstanding in the recording studio later.

-
Jimmy Miller, February 1968

Jumpin' Jack Flash and Street Fighting
Man came about because I had become fascinated by the possibilities
of playing an acoustic guitar through a cassette recorder, using it as
a pick-up, really, so that I could still get the crispness of an acoustic
- which you can never get off an electric guitar - but overloading this
tiny little machine so the effect was that it sounded both acoustic and
electric. Technology was starting to increase in sophistication, but I
just wanted to reduce it back to basics. I bought one of the first cassette
machines - a must for a budding songwriter - and then day in, day out recorded
on it. Then I began to get interested in the actual sound of the machine,
how close you could put the microphone to the guitar and what effect you
could get out of it... When we were in the studio I would bring in that
little Philips cassette recorder, get a wooden extension speaker, plug
that into the back of the recorder, shove a microphone in front of the
speaker in the middle of the studio and record it. W e would all sit back
and watch this little microphone record the cassette machine in the middle
of the studio at Olympic, which was the size of Salder's Wells. Then we'd
go back, listen to it, play over it, mash it up and there was the track.

-
Keith Richards, 2003

(Brian
was) probably the one I've made most effort to get along with. When the
sessions started, he came to me and said he didn't think he would be able
to contribute much. I didn't push him. I asked Mick what the situation
was and Mick said: Look, you can't force him, but he'll be OK. And
he was right. When we started working he really got into it and started
to get excited, and he apologized to me for having had doubts at the beginning.
Brian is very insecure. He has to have people around him all the time -
and he has a lot of hang-ups. But when he's doing something that really
interests him he's almost a different character.

-
Jimmy Miller, 1969

God, what was I doing? Who was I living with? It was all recorded
in London, and I was living in this rented house in Chester Square. I was
living with Marianne Faithfull. Was I still? Yeah. And I was just writing
a lot, reading a lot. I was educating myself. I was reading a lot of poetry,
I was reading a lot of philosophy. I was out and about. I was very social,
always hanging out with (art gallery owner) Robert Fraser's group of people.
And I wasn't taking so many drugs that it was messing up my creative processes.
It was a very good period, 1968 - there was good feeling in the air. It
was very a creative period for everyone. There was lot going on in the
theater. Marianne was kind of involved with it, so I would go to the theater
upstairs, hang out with the young directors of the time and the young filmmakers.

-
Mick Jagger, 1995

I'm very hung-up on electronic music at present.
If there is not room to include it on our album I would like to do something
separately.

-
Brian Jones, May 1968

Brian wasn't really involved on Beggars
Banquet, apart from some slide on No Expectations; that was
the only thing he played on the whole record. He wasn't turning up to the
sessions and he wasn't very well. In fact we didn't want him to turn up,
I don't think.

-
Mick Jagger, 2003

APPRECIATION

There are a couple country tunes (on the new album)
'cause we've always liked country music... Keith has always been country.
That's what his scene was. We still think of country songs as a bit of
a joke, I'm afraid. We don't really know anything about country music really,
we're just playing games. We aren't really into it enough to know. I think
it's going to be a good album.

-
Mick Jagger, mid-1968

I think that everybody knew that we had to
get back to our roots, you know, and start over... That's why we got Jimmy
Miller as a producer and came out with Beggars Banquet and those
kinds of albums after, which was reverting back and getting more guts -
which is what the Stones are all about.

-
Bill Wyman, 1982

(Along with Exile On Main Street),
Beggars
Banquet was also very important. That body of work, between those two
albums: that was the most important time for the band. It was the first
change the Stones had to make after the teeny-bopper phase. Until then,
you went onstage fighting a losing battle. You want to play music? Don't
go up there. What's important is hoping no one gets hurt and how we are
getting out... To compensate for that, Mick and I developed the songwriting
and records. We poured our music into that. Beggars Banquet
was
like coming out of puberty.

-
Keith Richards, September 2002

(It's) just a hazy mirror of what we were
thinking last summer when we wrote the songs.

-
Mick Jagger, 1968

(My favorite Stones record to make was t)he
last album. But when you get involved in the mixing you get so bored 'cause
you've heard it two thousand times.

-
Mick Jagger, June 1969

I guess I like Beggars Banquet the
best of everything we've done.

-
Keith Richards, 1973

I think Beggars Banquet, Sticky
Fingers and Let It Bleed.

-
Keith Richards, 1974, asked about hisfavorite
Stones albums

Yeah, well, you KNOW the ones I like. The
first album was good. Beggars Banquet was good. That's about it.

-
Mick Jagger, 1977, asked about hisfavourite
Stones albums

I like Beggars Banquet and Let It
Bleed very much.

-
Mick Jagger, 1987, asked about hisfavorite
Stones albums

Well, funnily enough, this year I've listened
to (Stones albums) more than ever, because they all came out on CD... (T)he
ones that impressed me were the ones I always thought were superior - Beggars
Banquet, Let It Bleed. And Sticky Fingers. And Exile.

-
Keith Richards, 1987, asked about hisfavorite
Stones albums

(My favorite Stones album ) without me (on
it is)
Beggars Banquet.

-
Ron Wood, 1998

REVIEW EXCERPTS

The album bristles with the brand of hard, raunchy
rock that has helped to establish the Stones as England's most subversive
roisterers since Fagin's gang in Oliver Twist. In keeping with a
widespread mood in the pop world, Beggars Banquet turns back to
the raw vitality of Negro R&B and the authentic simplicity of country
music.

-
Time
Magazine, October 1968

One thing is certain - Sympathy for the
Devil is a Rolling Stones classic, beautifully built and with a brilliant
lyric. If I could do it justice in words I would be writing songs like
it myself.

-
Keith Altham, New Musical Express, November 1968

I think the new Stones album is unflawed and
lacking something. I think the new Beatles album is flawed and great anyway.

-
Robert Christgau, Esquire, December 1968

The Stones have unleased their rawest, ludest,
most arrogant, most savage record yet. And it's beautiful.

-
Carl Bernstein, Chicago Sun Times, January 1969

The Rolling Stones are constantly changing
but beneath the changes they remain the most formal of rock bands. Their
successive releases have been continuous extensions of their approach,
not radical redefinitions, as has so often been the case with the Beatles.
The Stones are constantly being reborn, but somehow the baby always looks
like its parents... On Beggars Banquet the Stones try to come to
terms with violence more explicitly than before and in so doing are forced
to take up the subject of politics. The result is the most sophisticated
and meaning statement we can expect to hear concerning the two themes -
violence and politics - that will probably dominate the rock of 1969...
They make it perfectly clear that they are sickened by contemporary society.
But it is not their role to tell people what to do. Instead, they use their
musical abilities like a seismograph to record the intensity of feelings,
the violence, that is so prevalent now...

Beggars Banquet is a complete album. While
it does not attempt Sgt. Pepper-type unity it manages to touch all
the bases. It derives its central motive and mood from the theme of "revolution"
but isn't limited to that. Over at the Stones house there's plenty of room
for groupies, doctors, jigsaw puzzles, factory girls, and broken hearts
as well. Yet even these subjects are colored by the impact of Sympathy
for the Devil and Street Fighting Man. Beggars Banquet ought
to convince us all that the Stones are right. By putting all these different
themes on the same album the Stones are trying to tell us that they all
belong together. They do.